My First Term at EPFL
It has been a while since my last serious post. Maybe I should blame Twitter and other micro-blogging services who allowed me to blog only in 140 characters and that don't require you to sit down to write a whole post. But this one is different. It's a review of this first semester at EPFL. For those who don't know it, there are two Swiss Institutes of Technology. One in Lausanne (EPFL) and the other one in Zurich (ETHZ).
General Overview
The campus itself is awesome. Unlike ETHZ or Oxford, EPFL has a real campus. It is not just a bunch of buildings inside a city. It's actually a few miles away from Lausanne (It takes about 15 minutes from the city center with the M1 metro). Most buildings are built with the same architectural style. Not that interesting. However some buildings stand out.
Rolex Learning Center
This is one of the newest buildings on campus. It's really impressive. This building holds the library and is a convenient place to work. You can also eat there. You can choose between three different types of food. The first one is the "Table de Vallotton", it's the best restaurant on campus with a wonderful view. It's also the most expensive one. As an undergrad don't expect to eat over there. There's also "Le Hodler", this is the student's restaurant inside the Rolex. You can get there a lunch for 7 swiss franc with your students card (which is pretty cheap for what you get). At the same place you can also queue to get a Pizza or Burger/Meat. I would personally advise you the "Steak de Cheval" which is the best piece of meat you'll probably get on campus. The prices are subject to change so check out their website for daily meals and prices. If you just want a quick snack (sandwich, tea, coffee or croissant) you can go to the "Klee Cafeteria". Note that this cafeteria is open even on sundays and during the week it's open until 22 pm. (btw the Rolex Learning Center closes daily at midnight)
The library is big but unfortunately it's not always easy to find a place to work. UNIL (Université de Lausanne), HEC (Haute Ecole de Commerce) and other students discovered this beautiful building and since EPFL is a public school we can't kick them out which is so annoying.
As a student you can ask at the reception a workspace commonly called a "bubble". These are round workspaces where you can work in groups up to 12 people. It's a really convenient place to work in group. Each bubble has a code so you can't access those without reservation. Tip: you can reserve them by email.
Under the Rolex Learning Center is EPFL's biggest parking. If you are arriving after 8 am you won't have much chance to find a place.
Quartier Nord
If you take the metro to arrive at EPFL you'll have noticed the building works. They started building what's going to be the Swiss Tech Convention center. It aims to bring more life to the campus with some extra bedrooms too. The architecture and technology of this place is incredible. Check out the presentation video
Computer Science
I like a lot of things. I took a while making up my mind about what I wanted to study. I was highly interested in Physics, Bio Engineering, Electronics and Computer Science. I chose the last one. Why ? I’m still not sure. Maybe just because I hate chemistry and all others required to take those classes.
The first year in Computer Science starts like in every other university. Digital Systems, Basics of Programming, Math (Linear Algebra and Calculus) and Information Theory (Cryptography, Data Compression and Error-correction codes).
From an educational point of view, most courses were good. I would like to point out one course given by Jean-Yves Le Boudec about Information Theory. Not only because the course contents are highly interesting but because they way the course is given is game-changing. The course is highly participative. Definitely the best course of this first term.
The Computer Science department also has a noticeable building.
Research
When I arrived at EPFL I completely under-estimated the amount of research that being done at EPFL. I think they are aiming at the right technologies. They are researching what the industry really needs. That’s why they get so much funding. Over the few last years, EPFL climbed to the top of all the rankings in engineering. Currently 20th in the Shanghai ranking and even better in others. But I don’t think the ascension is slowing down. EPFL has great ambitions. Some students say that EPFL is focusing too much on research and not enough on education. I think that both are tied together. If you improve research, you’ll get better professors and better PhD which will also improve the quality of education.
Also, having better research means having more companies interested in having a research center on campus which means having more funding and jobs opportunities so this highly benefits to students as well.
Lausanne
Lausanne is a great place to stay. You’ll probably enjoy living and walking by the lake. The city center is a great place for shopping. The prices can be insanely expensive for foreigners due to the debt crisis in the Eurozone and US. Still you’ll always find a place to eat for a decent price. Food on campus is the way to go if you want to have a good and cheap meal. Finding a place to stay is not an easy task. Lausanne is overcrowded (EPFL’s success is also part of this). Well not Beijing overcrowded. You can find more information about housing on this site (for EPFL and UNIL students only).
If you have any other question feel free to ask me on Twitter.
Working on a Geiger counter for iPhone
It has been a while now since I made this Geiger counter for iPhone. I would like to sum up all the things I've learned about it in this post before archiving the project.
Why a Geiger Counter ?
Fukushima. That was the main idea. Geiger Counters are expensive and often not portable at all. There's no way people could own one. With this project, the components together are under 50$.
You could ask why people would want a Geiger but I can tell you that people are worried about nuclear radiations.
For instance the japanese tea seller at the end of my street was wondering if the tea he was selling was radioactive or not. Using our Geiger he found out it wasn't more than average.
How does it work ?
The electronics of the Geiger counter is made out of 3 main parts. The transformer, the Geiger tube and the signal stretcher.
After having passed in the chopper, the current coming from the battery is transformed into alternating current. Then, the transformer amplifies the voltage up to 400 Volts that is needed by the Geiger tube to work. This high voltage on the electrodes allows the current passing through the tube when a particle enters the tube. This event lasts only a few microseconds. If the signal was directly converted to a flashlight or sound, it would be to short to be seen or heard. For that specific reason, we added a signal stretcher that allows the signal to be long enough to be seen. Given that this is an digital circuit, this means the output is either on or off and its state doesn’t depend on the intensity and speed of the particles.
The Geiger tube is made of a metallic tube filled with ionizable gas in which are placed two electrodes.
Above are represented the two different cases viewed from inside the Geiger tube.
- When no particle enters the tube, no current can pass through the tube because the gas is not naturally conductive.
- When a particle enters the tube, it is likely to grab electrons from the gas. This is called ionization and now the gas is conductive during a short moment. Therefore the current can pass through it.
What are the features of the Geiger ?
The Geiger has three outputs :
- LED : A LED light to show each time the detector gets a particle.
- Buzzer : A buzzer sound to hear show each time the detector gets a particle.
- mini-jack : Goes straight into the phone's mini-jack.
- Alert : Runs in the background and alerts you in case of high radioactivity. Sensibility can be set by a slider in the settings app.
- Measures : The signal stretcher hides lots of disintegrations. Although the counter is not precise enough to take lab measures, the number of disintegrations is linear. You can say that a radioactive material is twice as radioactive as another.
- Crowd-sourced maps : The iPhone app features a crowd sourced map with all users of the app. It uses the GPS chip of the iPhone to provide information of average radioactivity in a wide area. The gathered data is provided by different labeled sources.
With collaboration of Loïc van Oldeneel and Colin Hannesse.
Why the US response to Bin Laden’s death is wrong…
I don't know if you remember that Palestinian's celebrated when the twin towers were attacked. You can easily find this kind of video on Youtube :
Now that Bin Laden has been killed, there has been party's all over the US. I do understand that the US have been suffering of terrorism lead by Al Qaida and Bin Laden. But I don't believe celebrating that way is the best way to deal with the situation.
Well there are better ways to handle this. I really liked this cartoon.
Is MobileMe becoming free soon ?
I've been using .Mac/MobileMe since the original iPhone in April 2006. Every year, you have to renew the subscription. Here in Belgium you pay 79€ for the individual license (which I find quite expensive for services that are provided for free by Google). But this year I had quite a surprise. I had been expecting free services for quite a while now. It started with localization features and is it now expanding with the rest ?
On my invoice, I was happy to read.
Amount Due : 0.00
DO NOT PAY
This is quite good news in fact but there is still no announced keynote before WWDC. I checked on last years invoice and there is nothing like it.
Anyone else having the same ? Comment !
Here is the original invoice (I replaced numbers)
Say hello to Apple’s A5. Chip of a chip.
Given my interest for consumer's electronics, here is a quick overview of what's inside the A5 chip.
We’re seeing the following marks on the A5:
K3PE4E400B-XGCI
APL0498 33950130
ECl035E1 1104
N3556N02 1107 A
I’ve figured out that “ECl035E1″ is a Samsung Part and which indicates 512MB of RAM.
2Gbit=256MB (per stack) so 512MB ddr2 @ 800Mbps
complete info:
K3: Samsung Mobile DRAM Stac
P: MDDR2-P(※S4)+MDDR2-P(※S4)
E4: A-Port I/F & Density & Vcc& Org (4 Gbit 2Ch 1.2V 46nm)
E4: B-Port I/F & Density & Vcc& Org
0: Reserved
0: Interposer I/F (0: none)
B: Generation B-Die
X: Package FBGA
G: Temp. (G : -25 ~ 85℃)
C1: Speed (C1 : 2.5ns@RL6, TRCD18ns, TRP18ns ) 800 Mbps
for reference see also http://www.samsung.com/global/business/
Looking at the samsung’s DRAM part number K3PE4E400B, the 4th and 5th column (E4) refers to ram density. The next 2 columns after that is also E4 which is the second dram stack. According to the specsheet, which is outdated, it does not list the E4 code only up to E3. E3 lists the ram as MDDR2-P 1Gbit. That gives us 2Gbits which is 512MB.
http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconduc…
Get your iPod to be an iPhone
Here is an iPod case that's called “Apple Peel 520″. It allows iPod users to use their iPod as a Phone. The official price for this adapter is marked around $388 RMB (about $57) and it has an one-year warranty.
I have personally contacted the main distributor of this Apple Peel 520, and I was told that this reviewed unit is still in prototype form, the final retail version will be a plastic case instead of silicon rubber. What’s more, we may help readers to buy it when it’s finally on sale, so please stay tuned!
So, let’s start off with the highlights. This Apple Peel 520 slap on a regular SIM card and make calls with your iPod touch. It does not support 3G, but includes a removable 800mAh battery which gives you up to 3 hours of talk time and 120 hours of standby juice. The funny thing is that when the battery is installed successfully, the adapter itself will vibrate, so we’re guessing it supports vibration.
The adapter has six main parts, a speaker on the top to hear the call, a removable battery, a SIM card slot, a “vibration motor”, a baseband chip, and a dock connector.
It’s not really thin…
The 800mAh battery.
The vibration motor.
The power button and the speaker (for hearing calls).
The Apple Peel 520 works with the iPhone voice calling and text messaging app, so the iPod touch needs to be jailbroken to allow those iPhone default apps to be installed on the device. The adapter will not automatically add these apps to the iPod touch and users need to do it by themselves.
Users need the “Yosion” and “YsSMS” apps on the homescreen to start using the adapter.
The UI of the Yosion calling app is pretty simple.
On the left pic, it shows the inbox of the SMS app on iPhone, while on the right it’s the inbox of the “YsSMS” app on the iPod touch.
The iPhone can delete messages one by one, while the iPod touch could only let you to clear all messages with no further options.
The iPod touch with the adapter allows you to import all contacts from the SIM card to the device memory.
Adding contacts works just like the iPhone.
The SMS app does not support full screen on the iPod touch.
According to PConline’s review, the adapter works very well. Making calls is perfectly alright, just like any mobile phones out there. There’s no drop calls but there’s a little bit delay when the call is made from the iPod touch. It supports 3G SIM cards but it still only allows you to make/receive calls and send messages. The reviewed unit does not support Bluetooth phone call and hands-free calling, but the retail version will fully support these functions. There’s one more thing to take note of, the 3.5-mm stereo headphone jack on the bottom right of the iPod touch has been “modified” to act as an antenna with the adapter’s dock connector, and users will access the 3.5-mm headphone jack on the bottom left when the adapter is attached. Here are some minor problems with the Apple Peel 520 for making calls:
And a few problems for the SMS function:
This magical adapter is not officially available yet. Chinese customers can visit the online store on Taobao to pre-order it, by giving a deposit of $100 RMB (about $15). The good thing is Apple Peel 520 supports all three generations of iPod touch. So, why not try to buy one for just making calls and sending SMS?
Source : PC Online China
Few more notes about Beijing
Woke up early. Visited the Buddhist Temple of Lama in Beijing. It really was a wonderful place. Unfortunately, pictures inside the temples are prohibited. We saw the biggest buddha in the world. Really inspiring. After that we went to the Great Wall. It's really a great place to visit. Like my sister said "I had a great walk on the Great Wall". You can either go by cable car or on foot to the top. We went by foot. It's really exhausting when the temperature exceeds 40° C.
After that we went back to town. And met a friend of mine. She showed us some kind of huge store where you can buy a lot of fake stuff (clothes, technology, shoes ...)
Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yTJcs_XQk0
We found some copies of the new iPhone 4 and the iPad. The copies are looking like the original ones but aren't working like expected. I asked a spanish man who bought 5 copies of the iPhone 3Gs why did he buy those. He answered me that he hadn't enough money to buy iPhones and that they wezre quite looking like the iPhone.
For the iPad I was impressed. The system is Android and it's running smoothly. You can use USB memory because it has a USB port.
For the prices, you can buy a fake iPhone for 40€ and a fake iPad for 80€.
Another reason why Chinese people buy this is because the iPhone 4 isn't released in China. And the iPad isn't even announced.
I'll be covering the opening of the Apple Store next week in Pudong, Shanghai.
See you there.
After that we had a great luck together eating the Peking Duck wich is vey good.
See you !